Elite Legislators and Unequal Representation in the UK
UK Political Studies Association – Specialist Group on Parliaments
Zachary P Dickson
London School of Economics
Motivation
- Equal representation & responsiveness are key characteristics of democracies (Dahl 1971)
- Representation is dynamic, as elections incentivise ongoing responsiveness to the public (Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson 1995; Powell Jr. 2000)
- Yet, studies increasingly conclude that responsiveness is unequal (Traber et al. 2022; Flavin and Franko 2017; Schakel 2021; Lupu and Warner 2021; Alexiadou 2022)
- Evidence is correlational
- Most evidence uses occupation as a proxy for social class
- Most evidence is from the US (with important exceptions)
What accounts for unequal representation?
- Economic inequality (Gilens 2005; Bartels 2016)
- Participatory inequality (Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012)
- Information inequality (Elkjaer and Klitgaard 2021)
- Legislator characteristics (O’Grady 2019; Carnes and Lupu 2015)
How do legislator characteristics drive differential representation?
- Representatives are increasingly disconnected from the people they represent
- One of the most salient distinctions between representatives and the people they represent is social class (Manstead 2018; Evans and Tilley 2017)
- Elites from higher social classes:
- Have different policy preferences (Gilens 2005)
- Are more likely to discount the preferences of the public in the case of disagreement (Pereira and Öhberg 2020)
- Might not understand the preferences of the public (O’Grady 2019)
UK Elites’ Social Class
- Existing evidence uses elites’ occupations as a proxy for social class
- Problems: Generational wealth, non-standard employment etc. are not captured
- What else might capture social class?
- Oxbridge attendance
- Three mechanisms: selection, socialization, and value signalling
- Oxbridge graduates dominate politics in the UK
- Compared to less than 1% of the population, Oxbridge graduates make up:
- 71% of top judges; 56% permanent secretaries in Whitehall; 51% Diplomats; every PM except Brown since WW2
- Cabinets: 45% Sunak, 68% Truss, 46% Johnson
Research Design
- Two designs:
- Close elections as a natural experiment (2015, 2017, and 2019 UK Elections)
- Full sample regressions (2015-2022)
- Measurement:
- Public salience of an issue is measured using weekly MIP surveys (284)
- Parliamentary questions and Early Day Motions are classified using large language model (Dickson 2023)
- Unit of Analysis: MP-Issue-weeks
- Dependent variables:
- Count of parliamentary questions about an issue (182,838)
- Count of Early Day Motions about an issue (74,072)
- Independent variables:
- Public salience
- Oxbridge Attendance (interaction with public salience)
Note:
284 Surveys. Values are presented as a three-month moving average.
Respondents select up to three different issues so issue total do not
sum to 1. Data source: YouGov (2021).
Responsiveness to Public Salience
Substantive interpretation:
For every 1 percentage point increase in public salience of a given
issue, representatives respond by raising approximately 1.42 questions
and 0.49 early day motions about the same issue (in the Bayesian
estimates).
Responsiveness in Close Elections
Substantive interpretation:
For every 1 percentage point increase in the public salience of a given
issue, Oxbridge MPs raise approximately 60% fewer questions (
Responsiveness in Full Sample
Substantive interpretation:
For every 1 percentage point increase in the public salience of a given
issue, Oxbridge MPs raise approximately 49% fewer questions (
Discussion
- Summary: Social class constrains parliamentarians’ responsiveness to the preferences of the public
- Why?
- Participation differences:
- Oxbridge MPs raise slightly fewer motions, but about the same number of questions
- Indicates Oxbridge MPs participate similarly, but with less consideration of the public
- Participation differences:
- Substantive Takeaway: Representatives’ social class backgrounds contribute to unequal representation in the United Kingdom
- Substantive Takeaway: Unequal representation occurs further upstream in the policy making process than previously thought
Limitations & Contributions
- Limitations:
- UK focus & generalizability
- Salience is not the same as preferences
- Results not as strong in full sample regressions
- Contributions:
- Causal evidence of social class is a driver of unequal representation in the United Kingdom
- Empirical:
- Two designs, three modelling strategies, two outcomes, and ten different issues
- Open source large language models to classify questions/motions (HuggingFace)
References
Alexiadou, Despina. 2022. “Cabinet Ministers and Inequality.” European Journal of Political Research 61 (2): 326–50.
Bartels, Larry M. 2016. Unequal Democracy. Second. Russell Sage Foundation Co-pub.
Carnes, Nicholas, and Noam Lupu. 2015. “Rethinking the Comparative Perspective on Class and Representation: Evidence From Latin America.” American Journal of Political Science 59 (1): 1–18.
Dahl, Robert A. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. Yale University Press.
Dickson, Zachary P. 2023. “CAP Multilingual Classification Model.” 2023. https://huggingface.co/z-dickson/.
Elkjaer, Mads Andreas, and Michael Baggesen Klitgaard. 2021. “Economic Inequality and Political Responsiveness: A Systematic Review.” Perspectives on Politics Forthcoming: 1–20.
Evans, Geoffrey, and James Tilley. 2017. The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class. Oxford University Press.
Flavin, Patrick, and William W Franko. 2017. “Government’S Unequal Attentiveness to Citizens’ Political Priorities.” The Policy Studies Journal 45 (4): 659–87.
Gilens, Martin. 2005. “Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness.” Public Opinion Quarterly 69 (5): 778–96.
Lupu, Noam, and Zach Warner. 2021. “Affluence and Congruence: Unequal Representation Around the World.” Journal of Politics 84 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/714930.
Manstead, Antony SR. 2018. “The Psychology of Social Class: How Socioeconomic Status Impacts Thought, Feelings, and Behaviour.” British Journal of Social Psychology 57 (2): 267–91.
O’Grady, Tom. 2019. “Careerists Versus Coal-Miners: Welfare Reforms and the Substantive Representation of Social Groups in the British Labour Party.” Comparative Political Studies 52 (4): 544–78.
Pereira, Miguel M, and Patrik Öhberg. 2020. “The Expertise Curse: How Policy Expertise Can Hinder Responsiveness.” OSF Preprints, October. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/74kma.
Powell Jr., G Bingham. 2000. Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions. Yale University Press.
Schakel, Wouter. 2021. “Unequal Policy Responsiveness in the Netherlands.” Socio-Economic Review 19 (1): 37–57.
Schlozman, Kay Lehman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E Brady. 2012. The Unheavenly Chorus. Princeton University Press.
Stimson, James A, Michael B MacKuen, and Robert S Erikson. 1995. “Dynamic Representation.” American Political Science Review 89 (3): 543–65.
Traber, Denise, Miriam Hänni, Nathalie Giger, and Christian Breunig. 2022. “Social Status, Political Priorities and Unequal Representation.” European Journal of Political Research 61 (2): 351–73.
Responsiveness
to Public Salience Questions/Motions i , j , t ∼ Issue Salience j ′ , t
+ Controls i , j , t + ϵ i , j , t Substantive interpretation : For
every 1 percentage point increase in public salience of a given issue,
representatives respond by raising approximately 1.42 questions and 0.49
early day motions about the same issue (in the Bayesian estimates).